This document discusses how to leverage online parent ambassadors to build a school's brand on social media. It recommends identifying influential parents within target audiences and training them to share engaging content about the school's values and successes. Content should highlight personal experiences and tag or mention other parents to encourage sharing. Developing traditions or games that represent the school's values and explicitly encourage sharing can also help content spread online through parent networks. The goal is to have ambassadors help shape what people say about the school digitally through their transparent, authentic recommendations.

1. Online Ambassadors
Lisa Colton
Chief Learning Officer, See3 Communications
President, Darim Online
lisa@see3.com @lisacolton
Slides: http://bit.ly/atidenu3

2. Agenda Today
• What we’ve done:
– Understand the networked landscape
– Find your online influencers
– Build trust with transparency
• What are online ambassadors?
• Building Your Brand
• Leveraging Their Networks
• Now Make It Happen!

3. Know Your Market…
and How It’s Changing.
• 77% of millennials say friends’
recommendations are likely or very likely to
influence their purchasing.
• 78% of those 65-and-older said they were
‘not at all likely’ to base purchasing
decisions on the advice of their peers.
The Pew Research Center defines millennials as being born
from 1981 to 1997. That means the oldest millennials are 34
now… and their kids are starting to enter school.

4. Therefore, You Need Their Friends to
be Making Recommendations

5. Where Are Parent Ambassadors?

6. Where Are Parent Ambassadors?
• On admissions tours and visits
• At sporting events
• At info nights/open houses
• At the grocery store
• At cocktail parties and community
events
• In neighborhood parks
• And… ONLINE

7. BE REAL. AUTHENTICITY TRUST

8. In person: 1:1 and high touch.
Requires opening the
conversation, and likely to
already “warm” prospects.
Online: 1:many and less ‘high
touch’ but more frequent.
Requires initiative by parent,
but spreads farther, and may
increase curiosity of those
outside of the ‘usual suspects’.

9. Online Parent Ambassadors
BUILD YOUR BRAND.
“Your brand is what people say about
you when you’re not in the room”
– Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

10. Key Lesson #1
Online Parent Ambassadors
BUILD YOUR BRAND.
“Your brand is what people say about
you when you’re not in the room”
– Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon
WHAT DO YOU WANT
THEM TALKING ABOUT?
Plant the seeds!

11. Key Messages Are
Conversation Starters
Research-based
excellence.
Targeted at
prospective
population.
Asking a question
invites responses.

12. Key Messages Are
Conversation
Starters
We excel in many
developmental
areas – not only
Talmud and
Hebrew.
Targeting those
with inaccurate
assumptions.

13. Key Messages Are
Conversation
Starters
Our faculty are
top notch. They
are loved and
appreciated.
Emotional
resonance and
storytelling.

14. Key Lesson #2
Leverage Parents’ Personal Networks!
(Which Include Prospective Families)
Who has the personal networks that
you’re trying to reach?
• Someone who has kids in an early
childhood program
• Someone involved in the business
or civic community
• A beloved lay leader at another
Jewish organization
• Someone who has a lot of
credibility with a narrow but
important segment (e.g. LGBT
families, interfaith families, families
with special needs kids)
• Real estate agent who helps new
families moving to town.

15. Personally
Resonant Content
is Sharable
My kid’s in that
picture! I’m going to
share it! This school
has great arts. Did you
know I send my kids
to a Jewish Day
School?

16. Content that’s
specific, values
based and
transferrable to
other populations is
most shareable.
Personally
Resonant Content
is Sharable

17. Helpful Tips: Audiences
Who are your target audience groups?
Where do you have room to grow?
Find ambassadors who are most relevant to
them and really happy customers and well
respected (appropriate online, friendly, etc)

18. Helpful Tips: Training
What kinds of ambassadors (formal or informal) do
you already have in place? Educate them about
your social media goals and empower them.
They may not realize the value of commenting on
and especially sharing your posts, or of tagging the
school page in their posts. A gentle suggestion can
catalyze new behaviors.
http://darimonline.org/blog/its-everyones-job-
plan-it

19. Helpful Tips: Content Planning
Tag parents in photos (or mention in the
comments or even directly) to create ripples.
Take photos with students (or faculty or parents)
holding signs – they tend to help your messages
travel farther than text alone.

20. Helpful Tips:
Social Games
Create or participate
in a social tradition
that represents the
values of your
school, and by
design encourages
people to share it.
E.g. #thankamentor
day in January.

22. WHAT’S NEXT?
Networks + Transparency
+ Parent Ambassadors
Awareness Campaign
Your Successes and Examples!

23. Q&A

24. • Lisa Colton lisa@see3.com
• Twitter: @lisacolton @see3 @darimonline
• Slides: http://bit.ly/atidenu3